Letter to the Editor
Sir,
‘A nation is judged not by how loudly it praises its soldiers, but by how sincerely it protects them once the applause fades.’
Sir, the recent Union Budget’s decision to restrict income tax exemption on disability pension only to soldiers invalided out of service has crossed a dangerous moral line. By taxing those who served their full tenure despite serious battle-related injuries, the state has effectively penalised resilience and rewarded physical collapse. Two soldiers wounded in the same operation now stand divided – one exempt, the other taxed. This bureaucratic logic insults not only the injured soldier but also the very ethos of military service, where endurance, grit and perseverance define honour. Disability is not a clerical category; it is a lifelong physical, emotional and economic burden.
Approx 40,000–45,000 disabled veterans are directly affected by this tax change in the whole country. The Government is effectively taxing India’s wounded soldiers to save Rs 70–90 crore per year which is just 0.00014% of India’s total budget. The uncomfortable question: is Rs 80 crore worth this moral cost? Estimated disabled soldiers from Uttarakhand are approximately 4,000 – 5,000 veterans with a tax burden of around Rs 6-9 crore. Nowhere is this injustice felt more acutely than in Uttarakhand – India’s foremost soldier-producing state. With nearly 1.4 lakh ex-servicemen and widows and one of the highest per capita military participation rates in the country, almost every hill village has known sacrifice, separation and loss. Here, disability pension is not additional income, it is medical survival support. Taxing it is tantamount to taxing pain.
More troubling is the silence of the people at the helm. Why is there no visible institutional resistance, no public dissent and no formal objection? Are the armed forces’ moral concerns now to be subordinated entirely to bureaucratic and political convenience? The military is not merely a government department; it is the last line of national survival. When wounded soldiers are treated as fiscal burdens rather than national assets, it sends a chilling message down the ranks that your sacrifice will be honoured ceremonially, but not institutionally.
History shows that the strength of armed forces rests not just on weapons, but on trust in the state’s fairness. Undermine that trust, and no budgetary saving can compensate for the strategic loss. Uttarakhand has always given India its bravest sons. It now asks only this: Do not convert their wounds into taxable income. This policy deserves urgent reconsideration, not just by the Finance Ministry, but by the entire national leadership, political and military alike.
‘A nation that taxes its wounded soldiers eventually impoverishes its own conscience.’
Yours etc.,
Col Bhaskar Bharti (Retd)
